NYHS Marine Technology Class, Henry Florian, Juana Garcia, Angel Torres

I've stopped by the Marine Tech class occasionally throughout the year to check up on the interns, but because of jury duty back in January, I had yet to make the formal observation visit until last Tuesday. Brendan and Tizoc's reports on their interns' performance are nothing less than stellar, so I was in no hurry. On Tuesday, it just so happened that Tizoc was not in school and so when I came in, the interns were essentially teaching his half of the class. Brendan was on the shop side of the room, giving a demonstration on framing and gluing. On the classroom side, Angel and Henry were leading a discussion on weather emergencies. Their students were eagerly completing a worksheet that required them to study a small booklet on weather. Angel and Henry were quite effectively helping to clarify students' questions and keep them focused on their task at hand. Juana on the other hand was seated at Tizoc's desk, diligently grading the quizzes given in the first half of the class. Together they comprised a functional team of student teachers accomplishing a fairly complex lesson.

According to T and Brendan, the interns have been invaluable and grown enormously in their teaching capacities throughout the year. I've confirmed this whenever I've popped my head in, but most certainly no doubt remains in my mind after Tuesday's visit. With that said, I must also mention that Henry and Angel both need some major encouraging when it comes to completion of their own written assignments. They may be great teachers and hard workers, but without handing in those sometimes tedious homework assignments of their own, it'd be hard to say they're completely successful. In my civics class this means handing in the weekly article reviews and completing the current assignment, which is to do a write up of results of a civic involvement survey that has been distributed around school. All in all, I'm very impressed by the quality of their internship, but I question how much comittment they have to their day to day academics, which is of course equally important to real world experience.